Saturday, April 5, 2008

Since 1952, Holyoke's St. Patrick's Day parade has been a March tradition here in Western Massachusetts. Held this past Sunday, March 30th, the parade brought around 300,000 folks out to Holyoke to partake in the 57th annual celebration of Irish heritage.

The Rileys would be proud. Oh, no doubt we should all raise a pint to Francis Walsh and the rest of the good folks who began in that first year what is today the country's second largest St. Patrick's parade. But the first glass should be lifted to Riley, an Irishman and the first European settler of Holyoke, thought to have possibly arrived upriver soon after Springfield was settled in 1636. The Riley family made their mark on the area, and by 1786, when the settlement was established as West Springfield's Third Parish (West Springfield having been carved off of Springfield itself in 1774), the land along the west bank of the Connecticut River the Rileys' had tamed was simply known to locals as "Ireland."

According to author Edwin L. Kirtland, in his illustrated article, "The City of Holyoke," published in the February, 1898, issue of The New England Magazine:

'Although it may be impossible to mark the date of the arrival of the venturesome Riley, the pioneer settler who located just north of "Riley Brook," now the southern boundary of Holyoke, his lonely residence was thus located, doubtless purposely, close by the water highway and near the old trail between Springfield and Northampton. We know that the Springfield colonists began to build boats immediately upon their arrival, in one of which they went over to West Springfield to build their first house; and the traffic among the river settlements as far north as Hadley Falls was carried on chiefly in these flat boats. There seems, however, little evidence that other actual settlers soon sought this territory, although the Riley family, of unknown numbers, lived in it long enough to give it the name "Ireland," now only a memory.'

The town of Holyoke was incorporated in 1850, with a population at that time of around 3,245. Begun as an investment venture, with a dam on the Connecticut River and canal system designed to harness the river's energy, the town grew steadily after a shaky start, the canals soon lined with mills and factories that were wooed to the area with the promise of steady supplies of power and people. By 1870 Holyoke's population had risen to 10,733, more than tripling its numbers in twenty years.

Here are some photographs of hydro-industrial Holyoke from the American Memories Collection at the Library of Congress, with original captions.

"Holyoke is a city of canals which supply water to the paper mills that line their banks. Massachusetts." (September, 1941)

"The Connecticut River is dammed to supply water power for the mills of Holyoke, Massachusetts." (September, 1941)

"Canals run in a half-circle through the mill area at Holyoke, Massachusetts." (September, 1941)